


If Fate Should Take You From My Side

by lyricalnights



Category: Mulan (1998)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 22:32:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricalnights/pseuds/lyricalnights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five ways the story might have happened, and one way it might have continued.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Fate Should Take You From My Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fox/gifts).



> So, this turned out a bit more melancholy than I intended. Rewatching the movie, I was actually quite touched by the relationship between Mulan and her father, which is remarkably functional and present for a Disney movie. I hope I was able to capture that for you.

When the messengers came to summon the warriors forth to battle, Mulan peeked over the wall as her grandmother instructed. She heard the imperious court official call the name of the Fa family and watched as her older brother accepted the commission in her father’s place. That night, they held a small feast for him, with good wishes and small gifts and all of his favorite dishes. In the morning, as they waved him off to the training camp, she prayed that she would see him again. The long weeks passed, Mulan doing her chores and trying to live down the disgrace of her failure with the matchmaker as she walked about the town. She sat with her father in the evenings, and he told her the old stories of the Fa family: stories of honor and glory. At last the day arrived when her brother strode back through the gates, arm bound in a sling but alive. The imperial army had taken horrible losses in order to stop the Huns, and had still barely managed it. Her brother was accompanied by the war hero Shang. As she peered at him across the table, Mulan wondered how he felt about girls who were maybe just a touch clumsy.

Mulan felt the tears standing in her eyes as her father stood in the courtyard, resplendent in his armor. She wanted to scream, wanted to try again to make him see that the Emperor’s request was unreasonable. She wished desperately that she could take his place, but such a thing was not possible. Fa Zhou turned to her, taking her face gently in his hands. He asked the blessings of the ancestors upon her, and reminded her that the Fa are clever and strong, never defeated by despair. He promised to return to them if at all possible. When he was gone from sight, Mulan ran to the temple of the ancestors and prayed fervently for his safety to anyone she thought might be listening. Two weeks after her father’s departure, a wealthy family asked her hand for one of their younger sons. Though the match could not be completed until Fa Zhou’s return, Mulan and the boy spent time walking together, speaking quietly and learning each other’s ways. He was more than a little dull, but he did what he could to comfort her on the day her father’s armor was returned to them. He had died honorably in the service of the Emperor, it was said, but Mulan only knew how much she missed him.

In the end, the army doesn’t bother to execute her. While the healer had discovered her true sex as soon as he undressed her, that fact was secondary to the belly wound he found at the same time. He was a healer of some note, but even he could do nothing against the infection that was already setting in. It might have been better to kill her quickly, given the near certainty of an ugly death regardless, but Shang’s one scrap of mercy was to send her back to her family with an escort of her friends. She pleaded with him till the last, for understanding and forgiveness. He turned away sadly, wishing somehow things might have been different. By the time they reached the home of the Fa, the fever had overtaken her in earnest, soaking her clothing with sweat at the same time chills wracked her body. At the last, her father held her hand and stroked her hair, whispering to her how much he loved her, his wonderful girl. In later years, the people of the village might whisper about the strange Fa girl and how she had brought dishonor upon her family, but no one dared to say such thing to the face of Fa Zhou.

She returned to them with her disguise unbroken, but her father feared the same could not be said for her spirit. Ping was considered a hero of China, one of the many who had helped to defeat the army of the Huns in the high passes. He had been feted and praised, along with his comrades, but there was no pleasure in it. Shang was dead, fallen to his end as her grip had slipped while hanging off the cliff. Ping disappeared quietly from the festivities, and Mulan reappeared in the village shortly after. Her mother and grandmother spread about a story of visiting distant relatives while the ire of the matchmaker cooled. Fa Zhou was overjoyed to see his beloved daughter again, but found her troubled spirit disturbing. One night, after a message that the matchmaker had relented and would be willing to seek a husband for this newly obedient and docile daughter of the Fa, he found her in the garden, crying messily in the grass. He gathered her to him and rocked her like a small child, and she spoke at last of her service to Emperor. No word was spoken after of a husband and Fa Mulan lived out her days as the comfort of her father’s heart.

For a man burdened with injuries such as his, Fa Zhou could move quietly at need. He crept into the room silently and watched as Mulan opened the cabinet to stare at his armor with longing plain in her face. He had known this day was coming, in his heart of hearts. Mulan had tried to return to her family and her old life, had honestly believed it was what she wanted. Still, as time passed, she grew restless and fretted against the loss of what she had found in the training camp and on the battlefield. She longed to ride out again in the company of warriors, not to battle as a means of glory, but to the defense of China as an example of honor and service. The village seemed to choke her with its smallness and narrowness of spirit. Though he knew she felt a duty to her parents that she would never shirk, he began to grow weary of asking such a thing of her, this half-life of duty, wishes, and dreams. That night was spent in prayers to the ancestors, and in the morning he wrote to a cousin in the distant plains whom he had not seen for many years. He had a son, army-trained, who wished for a new posting; could his honorable cousin see fit to find a place for the man Fa Ping among his encampment?

Mulan’s nervousness drove her at last into the garden, long after the moon had risen to reflect upon the water. To her surprise, she found her father there likewise, staring into the distance with a hint of sadness upon his face. She drew close, touching his arm, worrying that she was the one who had caused such an expression. His face broke into a gentle smile, the one he had always reserved for his wayward girl child. He placed his arm around her and cuddled her close on the bench. His sadness was not her doing, he said, but the doing of fate and time. Always, parents are fated to watch their children grow up and away from them. In time, they go to seek their own destinies, and a parent can but hope they have done everything possible to ensure their children’s ability to find it. He would be an odd parent indeed if he was not both happy and sad to see his Mulan wed to a good and honorable man whom she loved. He knew with Shang she would find a happiness to gladden his own heart, and yet, he would miss her terribly. Among the many winding paths of fate, she had taken a strange road to find her place in the world, but he would not have her change her journey for anything another path might offer.


End file.
